Notes & Letters
by OfTeaAndJumpers
Summary: Still deeply grieving for Sherlock after his fall, John suddenly receives mysterious notes and wonders if Sherlock is alive.


_**Notes &amp; Letters**_

John receives the first letter six months after Sherlock's fall. It is more a short note, really. Still, it makes his heart leaping uncontrollably as he looks at the words. The printed letters dance and blur before his eyes. He finds his hand is still steady, so he wills his eyes to adjust, blinks away unbidden tears, and reads the words to himself, slowly.

_Can't tell you more at his stage. I am sorry. But you know my methods, apply them. Molly counts. Talk to her._

John doesn't know what to think. He sits slowly down at his desk, head spinning, emotions ranging from anger to relief to suspicion and back to anger. Fortunately there won't be any more patients today; he would not have been able to pull himself together for normal conversation.

_You know my methods, apply them_. Only one person would have said that to him. Unless this was a rather cruel joke (and who would do that, Moriarty would be the type for such jokes, but he is dead, isn't he), this must mean … at the moment, John is too raw inside to allow himself to speak the words out aloud. Still, in a corner of his mind, that part where he stuffed away the small, lingering hope that Sherlock is NOT dead, he can hear the distinct whisper: He's alive.

But how ….? And why on Earth would he get in touch now? And in such a mysterious way at that. Molly has approached him earlier that day when he went to Bart's. Took him all the courage he could muster to return after Sherlock's fall from the rooftop, but she had said on the phone it was an urgent errand. He barely noticed that his limp was about to return when he entered the building. Molly simply nodded a silent greeting in the morgue, put a small folded envelope in his jacket and kissed him lightly on the cheek before ushering him out again. Without so much as an explanation, apart from „Read it later when you are at home."

Home? He hasn't got a home any more. A bleak one-room flat as far away from Baker Street as possible does not count. It's merely a place to pass out after a long day of work and too many beers at the pub around the corner. For all the good it did, he could even have stayed at Baker Street 221B, because Sherlock is in his mind all the time, every minute of every day since he died. John takes Sherlock with him wherever he goes; his workplace at the hospital, his lonely walks in the park, the dreary evenings with crap telly and takeaway food. Sherlock even intrudes in John's sleep. He turns John's nights either into dreams of blissful happiness – the two of them together in 221B Baker Street, their home, Sherlock in one of his better moods, smirking at John's jokes and lighting up the whole room with his smile – or into nightmares, where he has to watch Sherlock fall down the rooftop over and over again, unable to move. Waking up to those happy dreams to face the black truth is far worse, like a hangover where his heart aches instead of his head. Staying away from everything they once shared, their mutual friends, their flat, does not help John forgetting his best friend.

Looking at the small note, John realizes that his stirring hope might well be his ruin. What if this is a misunderstanding? What if, at a later step, he has to accept again that Sherlock is truly dead? But then again, he hasn't truly accepted it in the first place. Not yet. Not ever?

What he knows is this: he can't possibly be in a worse state than he is right now. Or has been for the past months. But he would regret it to the end of his life if he didn't do anything about that note. Which is precisely why he received the note, wasn't it? To do something about it? He knows his feelings are a right mess at the moment, but if he waits to calm down before he contacts Molly he probably never will. So he picks up his mobile – how can his hands be so steady when his emotions are trembling like so many autumn leaves? – and begins typing.

_Can we talk? JW_

_Not yet. Not safe. MH_

_But when …? JW_

_I'll get in touch. MH_

_You know that note destroys me. JW_

_Don't mention it. Might not be safe. Talk to you soon. MH_

John knows it's no use trying to get more information out of her, so he stops texting. Instead, he leaves the hospital and finds himself hailing a cab for 221B Baker Street. He needs some reassurance of the place they once shared, even if he is positively freaked out right now and too many feelings are bobbing closely to the surface. His phone beeps.

_Don't go to the flat. Too dangerous. MH_

_Wait, how do you know I am going… oh, it's you! JW_

He realises that they share the same initials. In his eagerness to read the message he never noticed that the sender was Mycroft, not Molly.

_Turn around. I mean it. MH_

_Your commands don't come across quite as convincing without your determined stare, Mycroft. JW_

_Next time I'll send a picture along with the text. Now leave it. And no talking. To anyone. MH_

He doesn't bother to reply, merely asks the cabbie to drive him to his own flat. Where he collapses on his couch. He would not get a wink of sleep tonight and he does not know what to do with himself. Certainly he should not get drunk. He might involuntarily spill the beans to a stranger on his hopes that Sherlock was back, and since two people have warned him about telling anyone, well he wouldn't risk it.

Closing his eyes, John allows himself a surge of hope. As he has never fully acknowledged Sherlock's death, his feelings have lurked in the back of his mind only to re-emerge now in full force. Much as he wants to remain calm, the prospect that he might be seeing the detective again is too overwhelming and he finds himself muttering to himself like a lunatic. How will he be able to function for the upcoming weeks until he receives the next morsel of information?

Four weeks later – agonisingly slow-going weeks of which John will not remember anything whatsoever except going through the days like they were made of stained glass – he receives a text from Molly and meets her in a cafe near Barts. She is already waiting for him at a table close to the entrance, cappuccino before her. He walks towards her with a slightly detached feeling, as if his brain cannot process the fact that he will, maybe, shortly receive another message that, maybe, reveals what has become of his friend.

Molly smiles up at him. Her face is calm, emphatic, her eyes revealing some inner strength he didn't know she possessed. He frankly never asked himself how she coped with Sherlock's death, and now he wonders if she ever had to, given the circumstance that he received that first note from her. What does she know he doesn't? It is all quite confusing, he thinks as he sits down and orders himself a tea.

Molly hands him a folded paper under the table after she has carefully examined the small room around her. „So how have you been doing lately?" She asks casually.

„You very well know how I have", he snaps, regretting it immediately. „Sorry", he retreats. "It's just … I honestly don't know what to make of all of this. It can't even begin to explain what ..."

„Shhh", she interrupts him. „I know. And I swear to God, it would do us both good to have a proper talk about it, but not here. Go home, read the note" – at these last words, her voice drops to a whisper - „and wait for more. Sorry I cannot be more precise."

They stay for another ten minutes, talking but not really talking, Molly giving John reassuring smiles now and then. He hopes it's a good sign. When they part before the cafe, John hugs Molly tightly, breathing in the faint lab scent of her coat. Reminiscent of Sherlock. Molly is a friend, and it's her handing him the notes and giving him hope again. Hugging her is his way to show his gratefulness and also, to be honest, a way to get some human touch.

When he wanders home, taking his time to breathe in the damp London air and letting the never-ceasing city bustle wash through him, he thinks that for months now he never felt the need to be close to any other person again. Until now. And even now, although he has hugged Molly (wonderful Molly, who gave his life hope again), he cannot contemplate being this close to any other human being except Sherlock. As if losing him deprived him of all basic human needs like a touch of hands, a rub of shoulders, a hug, a kiss, sex. Before, he was always dating women. Granted, the dates were mostly a disaster. And he knows it sounds awful, but the women often satisfied the needs of his body, where Sherlock tended to virtually all other needs. What does that say about him? He doesn't want to contemplate.

At home, he sits on the couch and opens the folded paper, carefully. Another note, short, again in printed letters.

_You said you needed a miracle from me. I am working on it. I do. Be patient and do not talk to anyone_.

John swallows hard as he reads the word miracle. He had asked for a miracle in front of Sherlock's grave, and somehow someone overheard him. He shivers, as if that someone is suddenly present in his flat. Maybe Sherlock chose to return as a ghost to John. He wouldn't put it past the man. Well, if he, John, ex-soldier and doctor, blogger and partner-in-crime of the world's most famous detective, is imagining ghosts, he is certainly about to lose it completely. But he was going to anyway, eventually.

John Watson is not a man who denies feelings, he is rather embracing them. Even more so since he had moved in with his brilliant flatmate who seems so distant about emotions. He has enough empathy for both of them and often tried to make up for Sherlock's lack of social niceties. And sometimes, especially in the weeks before Sherlock's fall, John got the impression that his best friend was involuntarily showing emotions behind that careful mask he often wore. It made him ever so much more appealing to John. John would not deny that. But that his feelings were somehow venturing beyond mere friendship was something he could not admit to himself quite so easily. Especially since he was not entirely sure about the nature of his feelings. Platonic?Romantic? In love with Sherlock's brilliant brain? Attracted to his bony arse, his floppy hair, the dramatic swish of his coat, the show-off attitude when he solved a crime? His piercing grey stare that softened ever so slightly when John said or did something that seemed to make him less boring than the rest of manhood?

He shakes his head slowly. Bit not good. Bad timing. He did not allow himself to address his feelings when he still lived with his friend. He buried them deeply after Sherlock died. Well, one night they were bubbling over like a milk pot left unattended on the hearth and he was waking up with a feeling of deepest regret about not having Sherlock told that he might have feelings for him other than strictly platonic. But telling him would not have led anywhere, probably. Not with Sherlock being who he was. The problem was that now that Sherlock might be alive and coming back – he is careful to voice that thought for fear it is not coming true – he is still not sure whether he should confront him with this.

He sighs inwardly and stuffs his uncoordinated feelings in a backroom of his mind. Quite an untidy place, he notices. If Sherlock's brain is a mind palace, his own is probably a crowded barn. Plenty of stuff inside, but the useful parts are sometimes blocked by bits and pieces of junk. He grins at that thought, catches himself grinning (which he hasn't in a long time) and grins some more.

Some two weeks later, as John leaves the hospital and is on his way to the tube station, a sleek black car pulls up beside him and the back door opens to reveal the tip of an umbrella. Mycroft. He hasn't seen the man since the day Sherlock fell, and hasn't appreciated Mycroft's attempts to check in on him. Apart from the last few texts they exchanged, of course. Now he feels the same slight irritation at being literally kidnapped in broad daylight as he had always felt whenever he was forced into some conversation with Sherlock's older and not less infuriating brother.

„So." Mycroft's face is calm and composed, as always. He glances at John, and his blue eyes flicker with concern for the fraction of a second, so briefly that John almost convinces himself he must have imagined it.

„About the notes." John skips any social niceties, he wants answers.

„All in good time, John." God, if it wasn't such a ridiculous notion, he would slap the man, if only to see his even features lose their countenance. He draws in a shaky breath instead and tries to calm down.

„Don't say that to someone who wasted six months on mourning someone who …."

Mycroft shots him a silencing stare. „Not here." John hasn't much choice. He waits in silence until the car pulls up at an empty warehouse in God knows what remote quarter of London. Probably some of Mycroft's secret places where they cannot be CCTV'd. Once they enter the warehouse and sit down in comfortable chairs in an abandoned office, John tries to make a determined face. He is not going to be denied information, not now. He will get answers. Mycroft sighs.

„It was for your own good, you know. Letting you, and others, believe that Sherlock is dead."

„Why is that for my own good when I was close to killing myself for despair on more than one occasion?" John really tries to stay calm, but his face must look thunderous, because Mycroft continues.

„Moriarty threatened to have you, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson killed if Sherlock would not kill himself and make others believe he was a fraud. Sherlock wanted you to stay alive, all of you. That's why he came up with a plan, and this plan included that you must under all circumstances believe him dead or his death would not be convincing."

John has so many questions forming in his mind that he fears he might implode from trying to process, let alone voice them. „How did he ….?"

„Really, John. Is that the most important question for you? We don't have that much time, I am afraid. I texted you because the Baker Street flat has been under surveillance of one of Moriarty's men ever since Sherlock faked his death. Your flat as well. Only Molly's wasn't, because in Moriarty's mind, she didn't count. Oh, how he would have hated it to be outwitted ..." Mycroft smiles briefly, then clears his throat.

„Anyway, Sherlock could not dare approach you sooner. Not until after I made sure that none of you were under surveillance any more. And even now we are careful. That's why you weren't supposed to go to Sherlock's flat. Or talk to someone, that is."

John does not answer immediately. Mycroft is right – much as he wants to know how Sherlock avoided his death, the most pressing question is another one.

„When will I see him?"

„That's not up to me, I am afraid. I don't even know where he is at present. He gets his messages delivered to Molly through the homeless network. So my educated guess is that he is somewhere in London. But I don't even have his current mobile number, it would be far too dangerous to text right now."

„So you tell me I have to wait another, what, four weeks or so, in case he decides to drop any new cryptic messages?"

„Basically, yes. You have to admit, Sherlock is going to great lengths to let you know that he is alive. He spent the last months to track down Moriarty's criminal network but still there is a danger that someone knows he is alive and makes you or someone else pay for it. You should ask yourself why he is doing that." Mycroft's face is a strange mixture: disgruntled for John being the reason that Sherlock so haphazardly puts himself to danger and at the same time faintly amused at having discovered something that John still fails to see.

„Well, with his great deductive mind, he probably has sensed I would sooner or later have killed myself or died of grief. Maybe he did not want that to happen after he has gone to such great lengths to ensure I am fine, as you said he did." That comes out very bitter, but John cannot help himself at this stage.

„Even Sherlock's deduction does not cover entire countries. But I appreciate you do put so much faith in him. He made sure that I received one of his notes about two months ago, inquiring about how you were doing. I suppose my answer made him contacting you."

John is speechless. A minute ago, he wanted to slap the older Holmes, with his infuriating air of confidence, now he wants to hug him for having changed Sherlock's mind. Chuckling to himself, he realises that dealing with a Holmes does that to people – the need to slap them, that is. The hugging part is – well, only reserved for John, it seems.

„I am afraid our pleasant conversation concerning my little brother is over. But you will hear from me soon." He gestures John out of the warehouse and into the car. When he is finally dropped off at his flat, Mycroft slips a folded paper in John's palm and simply nods, before telling the driver to leave.

Taking two steps at a time, John runs up the stair to his flat. He doesn't even bother to shrug of his jacket, merely slumps in his couch and unfolds the paper with trembling hands. The note is handwritten, and the spidery scrawl makes his heart skip a beat. He steadies his breath and starts to read.

_John,_  
_I suppose it is finally safe to send you a proper message. Believe me, I would gladly have done so much sooner, but you must understand that this was not possible. I assume my brother has talked to you by now and has filled you in on my faked death and my motives. Much as he and I may quarrel, he is of immense use in this whole affair. Without him and his network I would not have been able to check in on you and how you were coping. For that I am truly grateful (don't tell him or his head would never fit through a door any more)._

_I hope you understand why it was crucial that you believed me dead so that noone would be suspicious and try to harm you or anyone else close to me. Believe me when I say that I did this only for you. That I care for other people as well – Mrs. Hudson or Lestrade – well, I assume that when you come to love one person, it soon gets contagious and you start caring for other people too. But what would I know, being a sociopath and all that._

_I did not make the decision to contact you now on a whim. I wanted to text you, to talk to you, to see you, much sooner, but I knew perfectly well that it wasn't safe. And keeping you safe was why I faked my death in the first place. But hearing from Mycroft that you were so depressed you nearly killed yourself a couple of times, I told myself that this would not help matters. The alternatives of you being killed by Moriarty's men or by your own hand seemed equally likely, so I made the egoistic decision that I at least wanted to see you._

_Now that I have fully explained my motives to you; I assume you can forgive me for not having you informed. _

_Come to Baker Street 221B next Friday, 8 p.m. if convenient. If inconvenient, come anyway._  
_SH_

John sets down the letter and starts pacing the room. He has just received a letter from Sherlock. He would meet him in a few days. He … is slowly going round the bend, for at the moment, all emotions rush back to him and he finds himself unable to cope with all of them. The anger, the despair, the love, the hope, the relief, they all make an appearance and struggle for attention.

Sherlock has lied to him to keep him safe. Sherlock made the egoistic decision to come back despite the danger. Sherlock said something about love being contagious. That Sherlock talks of love is highly unlikely, but then again only he would compare love to a contagious disease. But does he mean what John hopes he means? Still, him assuming that John would forgive him so easily is just, well, Sherlock. His ego does match his brother's, much as he might deny it. John actually smiles at that. Oh, he knows what a pain in the arse his flatmate can be, what with his moods and body parts in the fridge, wall-shooting and insulting people around him thoughtlessly. But a Sherlock being a pain in the arse is preferable to no Sherlock at all, he finds.

Next Friday finds John in front of his old flat. He still has the key and lets himself in. Mrs. Hudson cries out as soon as she sees him and hugs him nearly senseless. Her eyes look red and swollen; she must have had a bloody heart attack when Sherlock turned up at her doorstep. „In the flat", she whispers and pushes him gently up the stairs.

So it is true. John's knees go week, he has to steady himself on the banister. Reaching the door of their flat, he draws a deep breath and opens the door. No going back now. He still somehow expects to wake up from an all-to-pleasant dream to find his world bleary once again. But no.

There, on their couch, sits Sherlock. He has got a haggard look around him, all cheekbones, elbows and angles, but his grey eyes burn as bright as ever. He takes John in, every inch of him, and John stares back for a full two minutes, at a loss for words. He only realises that he forgets to breathe when his head starts swimming.

Sherlock is getting up now and starts walking slowly towards John. The air around him suddenly seems so unbearably fragile, as if Sherlock would be gone in the blink of an eye. But he isn't. He stops right in front of John, so close, taking up his personal space, typical, isn't it? But John finds he does not care this time. Or has he ever?

He slowly raises a hand and tentatively brushes a finger across Sherlock's cheek. Then he slaps him, twice. Then he pulls the detective towards him and hugs him so tightly that he is sure Sherlock's fragile body will break apart.

„Is that a display of affection of sorts?" Sherlock asks as soon as John releases him. He makes it sound light, but his undertone is serious and even slightly insecure, John notices.

„Do. Not. Ever. Do. That. Again." John avoids the question and gives his best friend a determined look, not caring that his view is blurred by sudden tears. „What you put me through is worth years and years of anger on my part."

„How can we shorten that tedious process?"

„Oh … For a start, you could tell me more about your contagious feelings for me."

Sherlock goes very still at that, gazing intently at John. His look consumes John with its sudden depth of revealed emotion, like a sudden wide crack in a beautiful ice-covered lake.

„Unless talking about feelings bores you to _death_, that is."

Sherlock smirks at John's choice of words, then leans over and brings his lips close to John's right ear.

„I thought I made myself clear in that letter. You know how I hate to repeat myself."

„You are back for a mere five minutes and already I do not know whether I want to slap or kiss you."

They settle for the latter.

_Fin_


End file.
